Frank Feighan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegation and very much value its presentation, which was concise and informative. The aspirations of the Good Friday agreement with regard to education have not been followed through. I wonder what we were doing for the past ten or 15 years, because it reflected the economy of our island. We have capacity down here and there is a cap on education in Northern Ireland. We were just lazy. The colleges needed to look at a market that effectively was not there, and it has not been successful. However, we need to move on from there.

A total of 82.5% of Northern Ireland students attending colleges in the Republic of Ireland went to Trinity College Dublin and UCD. I do not think anybody needs to pat themselves on the back over this figure. If I was a student in Northern Ireland, Trinity College would be the Ivy League college to aim towards, so those figures are very much manipulated. I would like to know how many of those students attended Trinity College. I suspect the figure is much higher than that for UCD, although I may be wrong.

We are where we are and I very much welcome this report. I very much welcome the idea of a higher education joint working group. This committee must work very closely with the three institutes of technology to promote that working group. How will the scholarship fund operate? Who does the delegation hope to target and what areas does it hope to target? It is very sad that only half of the people from the Unionist tradition in Northern Ireland go on to higher education. This anomaly is very worrying and people should not be clapping themselves on the back for it. We should not forget about the Nationalist community but this is one area that could be targeted and focused upon.

It could help that community integrate or see what is on this side of the Border.